Elders' Guild:Aging in Community (Berkeley)

Aging in Community: Redefining Home in our Elder Years

As we grow in years and wisdom, can we find new meanings for "Home" in our lives? Can we find and grow homes and neighborhoods that help us not just meet our needs for affordable shelter, but also become communities where we can give and get care, compassion, relationship, support, and inspiration on our individual and collective paths?

On Sunday, June 19, join Elders' Guild co-founder, Cohousing Coach Raines Cohen, in a conversation about weaving community in our lives as we grow older - not just Aging in Place, but Aging in Community.

A Certified Senior Advisor and Certified Senior Cohousing Facilitator, Raines lives with his wife Betsy Morris and over 30 neighbors with 1306 years of wisdom (from 22 weeks to 86 years each) in 15 homes at Berkeley Cohousing (right), and has visited over 100 of these intergenerational communities across the country. They co-lead the regional support group East Bay Cohousing, with nearly 4000 members seeking cooperative community living options in the greater Berkeley-Oakland area, as part of a Cohousing California statewide network.

Raines, author of the Aging-in-Community chapter in the book Audacious Aging (about senior cohousing and the Elders Guild), is a co-founder of the Conscious Elders Network, founding member of the Aging in Community Collaboratory, and a member of the Life Planning Network. He organized the "Help Alice Keep Her Home" campaign that drew over 10,000 signatures (via PEERS and change.org) in one weekend to influence national housing policy to better support Aging in Community.

Please don't come expecting to get given a shopping list of wonderful, affordable places available for you to move in tomorrow. Do bring your dreams, visions, experiences and wishes for an engaged process of mutual discovery and exploration.

Successful aging and successful community living comes from within - starting with understanding our own needs and values and experiencing how we can better meet them together by letting go can provide a path to interdependent living... together.

Each Elders’ Guild Meeting is a Celebration of Life that Enlivens the Spirit.

Please bring (relatively) healthy treats to share

We shmooze from 1:45 to 2:00 and begin at two

Donations requested to cover the cost of space rental

About the Elders Guild

Conscious Aging for the Greater Good

Our vision is a world in which powerful and conscious elders join together in common purpose to bring healing, joy and connection to our lives, our families, our communities and the world.

Our mission is to create the communities where we re-imagine our old age, look after one another and embody the wisdom that will enable us to help heal the future.